Keeping Fit All the Way eBook

We all recognize that the quality and previous training
of the men this country is sending into service have
a very potent bearing upon the length of time required
to make fighters of them. For, after all, the
man whose training and discipline have been along a
kindred line becomes serviceable much earlier than
the man who has to acquire the necessary spirit and
quality. No one who has listened to the coaches
of our various college teams, or who has read either
the preliminary prospects of a game or the account
of it afterward, but must have been impressed with
the continual repetition of emphasis upon the “fighting
spirit.”

Hence, when our athletes flock almost en masse
to the colors, it means that we are enlisting a large
number of picked men who have been in training both
mentally and physically, and who, under discipline,
will make obedient, courageous, and enthusiastic fighters.
But a large number of these have been out of college
or out of strenuous athletics a year or two, or longer,
and they need physical conditioning to get back.

There is thus a new idea of considerable importance
involved in these condensed setting-up exercises.
For the world does move, and those who thought themselves
up to date on boats, aeroplanes, drill, and the like
have found even within a year that they must make acquaintance
with advanced theories and new and improved methods.

ESSENTIAL PRINCIPLES

Probably the most vital point is that the setting-up
exercises should not “take it out of the men.”
If we find a man exhilarated and made eager to work
at the end of his setting-up we have accomplished far
more than if we tire him out or exhaust any of his
store of vitality. If, in addition to this, we
can reduce the amount of time occupied in these setting-up
exercises and yet obtain results, we have saved that
much more time for other work.

Because they did take it out of the men, the old-time
conventional setting-up exercises were shirked and
the leaders were unable to detect this shirking; men
went through the motions, but slacked the real work.

Furthermore, all these systems tended to take a longer
period of time than was necessary to accomplish the
desired results, and made “muscle bound”
the men who practised them.

It has been found in sports and athletic games that
over-developed biceps, startling pectoral muscles,
and tremendously muscled legs are a disadvantage rather
than an advantage. The real essential is, after
all, the engine, the part under the hood, as it were—­lungs,
heart, and trunk. Finally, if we give a man endurance
and suppleness he becomes more available in time of
need.

Another point of equal importance is that the setting-up
exercises should be rendered as simple as possible.
If we are obliged to spend a considerable period of
time in teaching the leader so that he can handle
setting-up exercises, extension of the number of leaders
is rendered increasingly difficult. If, therefore,
we can make this leadership so simple that a long
course of instruction is not necessary, we save here,
in these days of necessarily rapid preparation, a very
material amount of time.